As LNG occupies a greater portion of the gas supply flow to US markets, more details are emerging of what it costs to install, improve, or expand facilities. Here are a couple of examples filed with the FERC in the 12 months before June 30, 2002.
Lake Charles expansions
At the Lake Charles, La., LNG terminal operated by CMS Trunkline LNG Co. LLC, the company expanded the sendout capacity to the newly built gas processing plant, immediately downstream of the terminal.
To meet target volumes, the company reconfigured existing facilities, specifically bypassing a recondenser and modifying vaporizing equipment. Cost estimates and actual costs, filed in late 2001, are shown below in the table on the left.
Early this year, the company went back to FERC with more plans to expand storage, increase sendout capacity, and install a second marine unloading dock.
The company requested approval for construction of a fourth cryogenic storage tank capable of holding 140,000 cu m and additional LNG pumps and vaporizers to increase sendout capacity to 1.2 bcfd from 630 MMcfd.
In its initial application to FERC, the company related that it conducted in early 2001 an open season for future use and potential expansion of the terminal. As a result, said Trunkline LNG, it entered into a firm-transportation agreement in May 2001 with BG LNG Services Inc.
The 22-year contract, which began in January of this year, gives BG LNG the "firm-service rights to all of the terminal's current uncommitted vaporization and storage capacity," about 5 bcf.
The contracted storage capacity would increase to 6.3 bcf after the contract with Trunkline LNG's existing customer, Duke Energy LNG, runs out in August 2005.
Trunkline LNG and BG LNG also agreed to broad elements of a second firm-service agreement using the capacity associated with the expansion proposed in early 2002. The elements of this second agreement allow BG LNG to obtain additional firm storage capacity of 2.7 bcf and sendout capability of 570 MMcfd from Jan. 1, 2005, until Dec. 31, 2023.
Trunkline LNG's estimates of the total cost appear in the table above.
